Recently Sony has introduced its new Xperia sola that features a unique Floating Touch technology. From the earlier videos, we’ve seen how selecting links on touch screen is made easier by simply moving your finger tip without touching the display. So how does floating touch work? Sony explains more over at its developer blog.

Developed in cooperation with Cypress Technology, the Xperia sola combines self capacitance & mutual capacitance sensors to make floating touch works. Most smart phones today uses mutual capacitance which allows multi touch possible as it senses touch points accurately. However this method uses lower signals, which won’t sense hovering activities. For self capacitance, it uses a larger sensors that create larger signals that’s strong enough to detect finger hovering up to 20mm from the screen. However the downside is that it can’t support multi touch.

The solution for the Xperia sola is to combine both on the same touch screen simultaneously. For touch events, you still get the same familiar multi-touch functionality while for hovering, it can only detect one finger at a time.

The biggest benefit would be the web browser as it can make use of HTML5 hover events. To expand its usage, third party developers can make use of hovering events that comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich API. The Xperia sola as standard will also come with floating touch enabled live wallpapers.

Sony today has announced the new Xperia sola into its Android line. This was formerly known as the MT27i Pepper which we saw a while back. While touch screens are normally interacted by actual tapping or touching of the screen, the new Xperia sola features “floating touch” that lets you interact by simply hovering your finger over the screen. This offers a new way of surfing the web especially when browsing through web links. You can accurately select the desired link by hovering and then tap to open.

The Xperia sola comes with a 3.7″ Reality Display (TFT LCD 854×480) with Mobile Bravia Engine. The device is powered by Sony’s very own NovaThor dual-core 1Ghz processor (similar to the one in the Xperia P and U) and 512MB of RAM. The Xperia sola also comes with 8GB of internal storage and microSD card slot. Over at the back, there’s a 5MP camera with Fast Capture and 720p HD videos. NFC support comes as standard and according to the release, the device ships with two NFC SmartTags in the box.

In terms of dimensions, it is 9.9mm thick and weighs 107 grams. Compared to the current crop of Xperia NXT Series, the Xperia sola goes right in between the Xperia P and Xperia U in terms of screen size.

At time of announcement, it runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Sony plans to release Android 4.0 upgrade for the device sometime in June. The Xperia S will go on sale sometime in Q2, 2012 with a choice of 3 colours – Black, White & Red.

In terms of pricing, the Xperia sola is expected to retail for EU329 in Europe, that’s about RM1,300 at today’s exchange rates but we expect the device to sell for less when it comes to Malaysia.